Promoting a green luxury product to belong or to stand out: a concept comparison test approach

Literature on luxury products reveals that product promotion involves two status-signaling goals as psychological mechanisms of social adaptation: the value-expressive function (to stand out: status enhancement) and the social-adjustive function (to be accepted: status affirmation). Traditionally, the value-expressive mechanism has been the most effective in promoting luxury goods. However, how these mechanisms operate for sustainable products, given the common assumption that luxury customers tend to disregard sustainability attributes, remains underexplored. This study challenges the aforementioned assumption by assessing how status-signaling goals influence willingness to pay for luxury products with sustainability attributes. Findings indicate that brand promotion that uses the social-adjustive function can be effective. This study recruits 464 participants and adopts an experimental approach involving concept comparison testing to explore the differences in consumers’ willingness to pay for a green luxury car. The car is presented with two distinct claims related to the above-mentioned luxury mechanisms and the absence or presence of a sustainable feature. Across all combinations of stimuli, participants perceive the sustainable luxury car as more appealing. This study shows that introducing a sustainability attribute in luxury brand communications can enhance consumers’ willingness to pay under either of the two status-signaling mechanisms.